I’m kinda cynical:
September 1: Biden with a 7-8 point lead nationally on Trump. With the map the way it is, he’s probable to win even with an Electoral College advantage to Trump.
October 1: Biden with a 3-4 point lead nationally on Trump. Why? Many reasons. The American right wing is very disciplined with propaganda, and traditional media has shown they’ll report whatever the right wing reports if they do it persistently enough. Trump has shown that he’s willing to do favors for autocrats if they help him lie to the American people, and the Republican party openly supports this policy. So a story drops that Biden buried a hooker when he was overseas somewhere. It doesn’t look correct, but wow, it’s media catnip, so it’s all the talk all the time anyways. In the electoral college, it starts looking like a toss-up.
Anytime: Hackers get into the voting rolls and drop little parts of the population from dense Democratic areas. We know they’ve been practicing this assault, it was the biggest alarm in the Mueller report, and the federal government has crushed every election security bill for four years. The theatre of the Trump era has been too good for anyone to worry about little technocratic bullshit like digital security.
November 1: With the second wave of the coronavirus in full swing, jurisdictions start putting in place hygienic restrictions that severely shrink their capacity to count the in-person vote. Voting centers will operate at half capacity, particularly in heavily affected (Democratic) urban areas. They do this after the mail-in deadlines, and once the second wave is credibly happening.
November 3: Biden wins the mail-in vote by something like 40%, because Democrats are far more likely to request a mail-in ballot. That means Trump wins the in-person vote by something like 30%. In-person votes are counted immediately, and there are huge delays in counting the mail-in vote. In some states, there are legitimate problems, just because they’ve never built the infrastructure to process this volume of mail-in ballots. Trump sees the partial results and gives a victory speech before 11 PM EST. He’s probably won nearly every swing state (maybe Kanye even gives him the gift of Minnesota — that could be enough to overcome losing the rest of the rust belt). “It’s now clear that no number of legitimate votes could change this outcome.” He quietly files dozens of lawsuits before midnight to stop counting the “fraudulent” votes.
November 4: The Biden camp starts countersuing. Right wing media reports that Biden is involved in a coup. State by state, they start cooking up reports of “irregularities.” Somehow, a number of ballots were sent out to people who, by the time they were sent back, no longer appeared on the rolls. This and other vague irregularities become the justification to claim there was massive voter fraud in the mail-in voting. There’s no way to count the votes without destroying democracy, they warn. The election is over.
November 5: The mess of lawsuits, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, are bigger than you could even fit into a news report if people had the attention spans to unravel it. There’s no way you’re getting a national consensus on what is happening or happened. Foreign propaganda, social media, and partisan media puts the confusion on steroids. There are accounts of massive fraud linked to social media accounts that will someday be linked to partisans or foreigners, maybe, whatever. Trump starts warning Biden that he must concede or else he’ll destroy the country.
November 6: “Bombshell” evidence that China helped Biden in the election drops.
November 10 or so: Elections do not conclude themselves. They require masses of institutional actors to certify the outcome. For Republicans, hearing that a fraudulent election has been perpetrated (which Trump warned us about, which he tried to postpone), will the story be strong enough to sway them from their course? Will they be complicit in the fraud that ended America as we know it, or will they stand with Trump to contest the result? Will Republican statehouses decline to certify their electors? Will Republican AG’s sue to stop their vote counts? Is the party going to reject their leader, or will they have his back like they have over Mueller, over impeachment, over everything else?
November 20 or so: There are armed protests over the election results. There are some casualties. Trump says Biden is responsible for every funeral. It is essential to conclude the election if we are to avoid civil war.
November 25 or so: “Continuity of government” arguments start popping up – if, because of a state of war or a pandemic, an election cannot be held, the current government may remain in power until an election can be held. In this case, an illegitimate election was held, owing to a pandemic, which is tipping the country towards war – so wowie, it’s almost overdetermined that the President cannot step aside. They ask the Supreme Court for an advisory opinion to this effect. Maybe Trump shouldn’t get a full second term, but we have to have a legitimate do-over in 2022.
December 1: The Supreme Court figures out some way of organizing the mass of overlapping legal battles before them. They take the case.
December 2: Half the media is reporting that there’s no conceivable way Trump lost the election, based on their expert analysis. This Supreme Court battle will decide whether America has a democracy or not, they say. Trump says it’s time for the Deep State to out itself.
December 10: The Supreme Court gives you an opinion that effectively decides who won the election. If it’s not Trump, Trump tweets something vague like “it’s time to take your country back.” The riot is now a militia. He tells the military to respect them.
December 11: The Trump PR machine spins into overtime telling people why the result is illegitimate. Trump encourages good patriots to do what must be done. The administration says they respect the rule of law (even though Biden would be an ILLEGITIMATE president), but are looking into the “feasibility” of handing over power in the middle of a “national conflict.”
December 14: The Electoral College due date. Just enough states refuse to certify their electors that Biden cannot claim victory.
December 15: Biden starts asking for international assistance in pushing the Trump regime to step aside. Trump casts this as Biden trying to lead a foreign coup.
December 25: Trump does some stupid thing on Christmas just because he has to own it.
January 1: The Supreme Court writes another advisory opinion stating that, no, Trump must step aside by January 20, unless there is such an event that makes “continuity of government” essential. It’s just poorly written or badly interpreted enough that partisans say the administration has wiggle room. Trump starts questioning whether the US is at war or not already. Your uncle starts writing on Facebook, “actually, it’s quite clear Trump doesn’t have a choice but to stay on.”
January 5: Hey, a foreign strike!